Utah's Epic Brewing expanding in Denver's RiNo

Epic Brewing Co. LLC has signed a lease for a 20,000-square-foot industrial warehouse in Denver’s River North (RiNo) neighborhood, making the Utah beermaker the first out-of-state craft brewery that will expand production into a Colorado facility.

The company hopes to get all its equipment into the space at 3001 Walnut St. by mid-March, begin brewing by early April and open a taproom and potentially a brewpub area to the public by early May, head brewer Kevin Crompton said Friday.

Epic officials will bring in a small leadership team from its four-year-old Salt Lake City production plant and will look to hire about five new workers to start, but they expect to add about another 15 employees within six months of opening, he said.

Crompton first announced Epic’s plans to build a second production facility outside of Utah during October’s Great American Beer Festival in Denver, but the property the brewery was looking at in north Denver did not work out for it.

After seeing news about Epic’s plans, however, both fellow breweries and real estate professionals contacted the company to see if they could help it find a location, and Ryan Arnold, vice president of tenant representation for Jones Lang LaSalle, matched Epic officials with the RiNo space.

“We talked with Ryan ... and we had a lot of great support from other brewers,” Epic cofounder David Cole said Friday. “It speaks volumes to Denver. That would never happen in Utah.”

Epic officials were looking to place a production plant out of state because of intense competition between brewers within Utah and because Utah’s liquor laws are more restrictive than Colorado’s, Crompton said.

The Denver plant will produce draught beer that will be sold throughout the metro area — a market that Epic has yet to enter — and 22-ounce bottled beers that will be distributed to states east of Colorado.

Within one year of its opening, Crompton expects the new plant to produce about 20,000 barrels of beer, more than the 16,000 barrels of beer now produced in the Utah location, which will remain open and make beer for the Rocky Mountain West and West Coast.

The new location will have enough capacity eventually to make 44,000 barrels of beer a year.

In addition to the production facility, the former auto-body warehouse will include a taproom featuring roughly 20 Epic beers and offerings from about 15 other breweries, Crompton said. Officials are considering serving food as well but have not yet made a final decision on whether to seek a brewpub license, he said.

Epic will be the third brewery to open within a seven-block area in the increasingly popular RiNo neighborhood north of downtown.

Black Shirt Brewing Co. and Our Mutual Friend Malt & Brew both opened in the area in late 2012, and Crompton said the idea of helping to create a new brewing neighborhood played into the decision to locate on Walnut.

“The building has a beautiful curb appeal, with all the lofts going in here and a couple of brewers right down the street and a lot of great restaurants,” Crompton said. “The beer community is so strong in Colorado, and I look forward to being a part of it.”

While it’s common for large national breweries like Anheuser-Busch InBev and MillerCoors LLC to have production plants in several states — and both have major facilities in Colorado — it is more unusual for smaller, locally owned breweries to have locations in multiple areas of the country.

Two Colorado brewers — New Belgium Brewing Co. of Fort Collins and Oskar Blues of Longmont — announced plans in 2012 to build second locations in North Carolina. Epic is the first out-of-state brewery to build a new facility in Colorado.

Jones Lang LaSalle represented Kresher Capital of Denver, which purchased the building at 3001 Walnut on Dec. 27. Kresher has offices in Aventura, Fla. and in Denver.

Kevin Crompton, head brewer for Epic Brewing Co., displays a bronze medal he won on Oct. 13 at the Great American Beer Festival for the Utah brewery’s Utah Sage Saison. Crompton said at the Denver festival that Epic will open a production facility in the Denver area in early 2013.